Date:         Thu, 27 Jul 1995 01:36:07
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Cheeses@arn.net (Your full name)
Subject:      Favorite VW Junkyards & Other Strange Tales (Kinda Long Post)

I've stumbled upon quite a few VW junkyards before but several come to mind as the best:


Santa Fe, New Mexico
   My all-time favorite was John's VW, just down Agua Fria Street from my house in Santa Fe.
Here were hundreds and hundreds of old Beetles, Kombis, Westfalias, Type IIIs (including
several Notchbacks), Type IVs, etc.  (Santa Fe seems to be the place for old VWs and Volvo
to come to die.)
  John would just let us roam around the five acres or so, sometimes for hours on end.
The cars were lying on their sides, upside down, right side up, sometimes packed ten deep,
all among the sage, cacti and beautiful views of the mountains, riverbed and desert.
The doors were usually gone: those were items John could sell quickly, and he stockpiled
them in a building, along with the engine heads.
   It was fun to try and guess the story behind the previous owner of each vehicle.
They would leave little clues lying around inside the half-gutted remains, e.g., a
weatherbeaten, paperback copy of the I-Ching; Deadhead stickers; all kinds of new-age
paraphernalia, anti-nuclear bumper stickers, various pills, roaches and so on.
   I had a Notchback and a Bus at the time and my friend had a Bus and a Beetle.
One morning we had been poking around back there and managed to gather all the parts
we could carry.  We took 'em up front and asked John how much for all this stuff.
   He said something like, "Oh, about twelve bucks, I guess."
   I said, "I also found this rear engine hatch for my Notchback.  How much for it?"
(The previous owner of my car had cut a hole in the rear deck and hatch lid and mounted
a scoop "for cooling.")
   John said, "Ah, just take it -- you're doing me a favor by hauling off all this junk."
   John and Sarah were great folks -- John and his mechanics did quality work.  I think
they finally gave up the VW shop, though.


Moab, Utah
   I remember another VW junkyard just outside of Moab.  I think it was just northeast of town.
The guy there had lots of beetles and buses, plus 4 or 5 Notchbacks and some Fastbacks and
Squarebacks (station wagons).  He was pretty reasonable on parts.


Navajo Reservation, Four Corners
   One hot July a few years back, my friend Bill and I were traveling from Salt Lake City to
Mexico when his '67 Bus konked out.  Turned out it was the generator.  We were out in the
middle of the vast Navajo Reservation, about sixty miles from Badwater, Arizona and 80 miles
from Fanbelt, New Mexico.  Beautiful red desert and mesas all around.  About a mile off in
the distance we watched a young girl herd sheep.  Remembering a sizable junkyard about thirty
miles back, we decided to give it a shot.
   We finally heard a car coming down the road. Bill stuck out his thumb (the engine hatch was
open: we were obviously S.O.L.). Three young Navajos pulled up in an old pickup, pulled some
chains out of the back and towed us back to the junkyard.  They refused payment and wished us
good luck. I spied what looked like an old VW Bus way off across the desert.  We opened the
door to the Quonset hut that served as the office.  The air was cool from the swamp box cooler
humming in the window.  It felt great.  There were several Navajo men sitting around, taking a
break from the heat.  They looked at us, expressionless.
   Bill said, "Hey, fellas, we're knee-deep in shit right now, I'm sure hoping y'all can help
out a couple a down-on-their-luck, dusty-assed sonsabitches."  They just stared, no expression.
"Uh, anyway," he continued, "the generator in our old VW Bus just went south and I's wonderin'
if you got an old Volkswagen maybe we could get some parts from."
   Finally the guy in charge there (?) said, "No.  Don't got that."
   I said, "I noticed that you've got an old VW bus out there in the field.  Mind if we look
at it?"
   He shrugged, "Look if you want."
   So, off we trudged through the desert, with a few tools and a couple of cold Coors Tallboys.
The bus was a pre-'68 model and had a 12 volt generator, so we figured it must be a '66 or '67.
An hour or so later, we had extracted the entire top portion of the engine shroud, complete
with generator, fan, voltage regulator, pulley, fanbelt, etc.
   We took turns carrying the thing back to the office.  "Well, we found somethin' that might
work here," said Bill.  "So how much you take for this old thing?"
   The head guy said, "Hundred dollars."  The Navajo men all glanced at one another, waiting
to hear whether we would cough up that much dough.
   We looked at each other.  Suddenly Bill's eyes lit up.  "Hang on a minute.  I got somethin'
I GOTTA show you."
   Bill went out to our Bus and, digging through some boxes in the back, brought in the trophy:
a stuffed armadillo, its feet nailed to a varnished wood plaque, the kind you might find in a
Mexican tourist market.  He'd picked it up for a couple of bucks at a garage sale.  It had a
couple of toes missing from one foot (paw?).
   Suddenly, the men's eyes opened wide with amazement.  They'd apparently never seen such a
wondrous creature.  You could tell they loved animals by their expressions.
   "Trade?" Bill asked.
   The men looked at each other for a few seconds and the head guy said, "Yeah."  You'd think
he'd just won first place at the rodeo, from the proud look on his face. 
   So, we took the gizmo out to the Bus and, in a couple of hours, after push starting it,
had it running.  The generator ran fine and the idiot light went out.  We didn't have any more
problems (mechanical, anyway) for the rest of the trip.


Austin, Texas
   There was a large foreign car junkyard between Austin and Manor.  A friend (fiend?) borrowed
my Beetle and somehow backed into something, putting a large dent in the passenger door.  Then,
one drunken night, he shot several large holes in the driver's door with a  pistol, point blank.
(I wasn't in the car at the time.)  I had to buy two new doors. The driver's door ended up being
yellow and the passenger's faded green, with a deer decal on it.  (My Beetle was green.)  So,
after that, I was drivin' a really low profile car.  Anyway, that junkyard had tons of  VWs.
Central Austin has more old VWs per capita than anywhere I can think of.


Amarillo, TX
   There was this one-eyed pirate kind of guy (sometimes he'd take his eye patch off and stare
at you maniacally, just for effect) who had owned a VW shop in Amarillo for 20 years or so.
He was the kind of guy who would paint a generator with silver paint and tell you it was just
"rebuilt."  Once, one of his mechanics replaced a door and did some body work to the fenders of
my Beetle.  When they were through, One-eye suggested that we shoot craps for the bill.  I kept
on getting good rolls, one after the other, until I had pared the bill down from about $120 to $30.
Then he called it quits.
   He did, though, have a great foreign car junkyard east of town where I scavenged plenty of
parts.  But he finally sold it to some Vietnamese guys who -- brace yourselves: this ain't gonna
be pretty -- had somebody with a mobile car crusher turn all the VWs there (about 100 or more)
into pancakes.  Then they hauled them away to the great VW junkyard in the sky... 


   So I guess the moral to this story is to support your local VW junkyard, especially if they're
more or less honest (or at least reasonable).  Save the best junkers from "The Crusher." 


Keep The Faith,

Cheese